


Behind the camera

by AliciaSinCiudad



Series: Tumblr-prompt stand-alones [17]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Bodhi-Centric, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-10 04:50:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14730257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliciaSinCiudad/pseuds/AliciaSinCiudad
Summary: Bodhi had started taking holo-vids again.





	Behind the camera

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt from k-m-brown's writing blog: [please take pictures of your friends](http://k-m-brown.tumblr.com/post/173880820620/coltre-please-take-pictures-of-your-friends)

Bodhi had started taking holo-vids again.

He’d done it a lot as a kid. Too shy to be in the vids himself, he would film candids of his friends, and they’d all enjoyed viewing them together later on. One could always count on Bodhi to have something funny, or cute, or sweet, to show at a moment’s notice. And Bodhi always had something to watch late at night, when everyone else was asleep, to make him feel less alone. These were his friends, he told himself, as he watched them smile at each other, laugh at each other’s jokes, hug and kiss each other while Bodhi held the camera.

He always hoped someone would take a holo-vid of him, but he never asked. He was too embarrassed. If someone wanted to, they would. And no one did, so therefore, no one wanted to. Better not to be a bother. Deep down, he understood that they only let him hang around because he was good at staying out of the way. Why ruin that when he had a good thing going?

And now, so many years later, he was starting to take holo-vids again. Especially of Baze, the last remnant of NiJedha, and of Jyn and Cassian, the war orphans who never gave up the fight. Especially of Jyn and Cassian. Especially of Cassian.

They didn’t seem to mind.

In fact, Baze seemed to like the idea that something of NiJedha would survive after he and Bodhi were gone. He spoke in Jedhan, using words Bodhi hadn’t heard since before the occupation. Words he’d never caught on his childhood vids. Words that would survive now, because Baze was saying them and Bodhi was recording them.

On the other hand, Jyn and Cassian had protested, at least at first. They both preferred to disappear. A self-denying tool for the Rebellion, and a self-sufficient survivalist; they both shunned personal connection, and lived in the shadows. And yet, somehow they’d managed to learn how to trust each other, and to trust themselves around each other. It was beautiful to watch.

They got used to Bodhi’s camera. They knew what it meant to him, having someone to film. And they enjoyed looking at the little vids he made of them, sharing a private smile over half-forgotten jokes. And Bodhi enjoyed looking at them at night, alone in his room, telling himself he wasn’t actually alone. He had friends. They let him film them.

One day, Bodhi found an old-fashioned data cylinder, the same familiar make as all the cylinders he’d always used as a child. He found an older projector that could read the data, and he smiled sadly as the brightly shining faces of his childhood friends splashed against the wall. Clips of Rishi and Hikmet, of Kiran and Dilara, of Leyla and Maryam and Fei-Fei. Memories flooded back, as though he remembered these exact smiles, these exact laughs, these exact glances and gestures.

And then, something unexpected happened.

Bodhi appeared on the wall, young Bodhi, as he had been all those years ago. He was not laughing or singing or giving extravagant hugs. Just smiling to himself, absorbed in the repair of some forgotten mechanical trinket. Unaware that he was being filmed. That someone cared to film him.

Bodhi felt tears trickle down his cheeks. So someone _had_ filmed him. Someone had cared. He wondered which friend it had been, but he knew that he would never know. They’d been hidden behind the camera.

**Author's Note:**

> The text from the tumblr post that inspired this is as follows:
> 
> _please take pictures of your friends. take pictures of your friends when they laugh, and when they are happy. And when they are sad, too. Take pictures of them partying, studying, eating, or sleeping in your bed. Take pictures of their new hair color, or new shoes, take pictures of them while they roll their first cigarette, and take pictures of their last, when they quit smoking. take pictures of your friends just being themselves. Tell them they are beautiful all the time you think it. They may dislike these pictures now. but one day, very very far from this year, they will be thankful_


End file.
